Among the first music purchases I made after moving to Champaign-Urbana in 86 was a cassette copy of Boomtown, the only release from the California duo David + David (last names Baerwald and Ricketts). The title-ish track, “Welcome to the Boomtown,” scraped the bottom of the Top 40 in November–it’s a great candidate for a PastBlast post the next time one of those three shows is featured. I hadn’t listened to the album in a LONG time, but a couple of nights ago I fell down a YouTube hole that led me to cycle through most of its songs again. I’d forgotten how good it is, and how much I liked a lot of it.
A number of the songs are careful character studies of the on-their-way-to-down-and-out in mid-80s LA. Particularly discomfiting is “Ain’t So Easy” (which also made the Hot 100), told from the point of view of an abusive partner who doesn’t quite recognize he’s got a problem.
Today’s feature was one of my favorites, a non-charting single. I heard it a bunch on WPGU that fall and winter.
The Music of My Life 
You have no idea how much it means to find another music-obsessed soul who enjoys David+David and Boomtown as much as I do.
Two latter-day songs that lyrically remind me of “Welcome To The Boomtown” are “Long Road Out Of Eden” from the 2007 Eagles double-album of the same name that was initially only available at Wal-Mart and James McMurtry’s “We Can’t Make It Here” (2005).
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